At one point in his book The Divine Comedy, the Italian poet Dante is traveling through purgatory on his way to paradise. American poet T.S. Eliot describes the scene: "The people there were inside the flames expurgating their errors and sins. And there was one incident when Dante was talking to an unknown woman in her flame. As she answered Dante's questions, she had to step out of her flame to talk to him, until at last she was compelled to say to Dante, 'Would you please hurry up with your questions so I can get on with my burning?'" I bring this to your attention, Aries, because I love the way you've been expurgating your own errors and sins lately. Don't let anything interfere with your brilliant work. Keep burning till you're done. (Source: "A New Type of Intellectual: Contemplative Withdrawal and Four Quartets," by Kenneth P. Kramer.)

Grace emerges in the ebb and flow, not just the flow. The waning reveals a different blessing than the waxing. Where are you in the great cycle of your life? For inspiration in figuring it all out, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Of the many things that have gone right for you during your time on Earth, the most crucial was your birth. As you crossed over the threshold, trading the warm dark sanctuary for the bright noisy enigma, you didn't die! It was a difficult act of high magic that involved many people who worked very hard in your behalf. The skills they provided in helping you navigate your rite of passage were in turn made possible by previous generations of threshold-tenders who bequeathed their expertise.

Months before that initiation, a more secret miracle bloomed: Your life began as a single cell, spawned by the explosive fusion of two highly specialized bundles of chromosomes. How could that tiny package of raw material have possibly grown a brain and liver and heart and stomach over a period of a few months? What inscrutable genius guided and oversaw the emergence of your fully formed infant body, that virtuoso creation, from the slimmest of clues?
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

If you've been holding yourself back in any way, Taurus, now's the time to unlock and unleash yourself. If you have been compromising your high standards or selling yourself short, I hope you will give yourself permission to grow bigger and stronger and brighter. If you've been hiding your beauty or hedging your bets or rationing your access to the mother lode, you have officially arrived at the perfect moment to stop that nonsense.

Whether it's your time to ferment in the shadows or sing in the sun, fresh power to transform yourself is on the way. Life always delivers the creative energy you need to change into the new thing you must become. For more help in understanding it all, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
You can drink a glass of water. You can spread butter on a slice of toast. You can wash your hair and prune your plants and draw infinity signs on a piece of paper. Your hands work wonderfully well! Their intricate force and sustained grace are amply supported by your heart, which circulates your blood all the way out to replenish the energy of the muscles and nerves in your fingers and palms and wrists. After your blood has delivered its blessings, it finds its way back to your heart to be refreshed. This masterful mystery repeats itself over and over again without you ever having to think about it.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my new book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

In the cult blaxploitation film The Human Tornado, the main character Dolemite brags about his prowess. "I chained down thunder and handcuffed lightning!" he raves. "I used an earthquake to mix my milkshake! I eat an avalanche when I want ice cream! I punched a hurricane and made it a breeze! I swallowed an iceberg and didn’t freeze!" This is the way I want to hear you talk in the coming week, Gemini. Given the current astrological configurations, you have every right to. Furthermore, I think it'll be healthy for you.

You can learn to be lucky. It's not a mystical force you're born with, but a habit you can develop. How? For starters, be open to new experiences, trust your gut wisdom, expect good fortune, see the bright side of challenging events, and master the art of maximizing serendipitous opportunities. For more help, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Your imagination may be the best gift you've been given. It's the source of your creative power. If there's a particular experience or object you want to bring into your life, the first thing you've got to do is visualize it. The practical actions you take to manifest your dreams always refer back to the pictures in your mind's eye. And so every goal you fulfill, every quest you carry out, begins as an inner vision. Your imagination is the engine of your destiny. It's the catalyst with which you design your future. Do you know where it comes from? Do you have any idea how powerful it is?
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Astrologer Antero Alli theorizes that the placement of the sign Cancer in a person's chart may indicate what he or she tends to whine about. In his own chart, he says, Cancer rules his ninth house, so he whines about obsolete beliefs and bad education and stale dogmas that cause people to shun firsthand experience as a source of authority. I hereby declare these issues to be supremely honorable reasons for you to whine in the coming week. You also have cosmic permission to complain vociferously about the following: injustices perpetrated by small-minded people; short-sighted thinking that ignores the big picture; and greedy self-interest that disdains the future. On the other hand, you don't have clearance to whine about crying babies, rude clerks, or traffic jams.

Somewhere there's a treasure that has no value to anyone but you, and a secret that's meaningless to everyone except you, and a frontier that harbors a revelation only you would know how to exploit. Why not go in search of those things? For inspiration, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
May you eat an unfamiliar dessert in a strange land at least once every three years.

May you wake up to salsa music one summer morning and start dancing while you're still half-­asleep.

May you spray-paint Rilke poems as graffiti on highway overpasses.

May you mix stripes with plaids, floral patterns with checks, and yellowish-green with brownish-purple.

May you learn to identify by name 20 flowers, 15 trees, 10 clouds and one extrasolar planet.

May you put a bumper sticker on your car or bike that says, "My god can kick your god's ass!"

If you bury your face in your tear-stained pillow and beg God to please send you your soul mate, may you not slur your words in such a way that they sound like "cell mate."

May you dream of taking a trip to the moon in a gondola powered by firecrackers and wild swans.

May you actually kiss the earth now and then.

May you find many good excuses to say, as physicist Niels Bohr once did, "Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true."
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

L.A. Weekly praised the music of drone-noise band Barn Owl. Its review said that the listening experience is "akin to placing your ear against the Dalai Lama's stomach and catching the sound of his reincarnation juices flowing." That sounds a bit like what's ahead for you in the coming week, Leo: getting the lowdown on the inner workings of a benevolent source . . . tuning in to the rest of the story that lies behind a seemingly simple, happy tale . . . gathering up revelations about the subterranean currents that are always going on beneath the surface of the good life. It's ultimately all positive, although a bit complicated.

When they say "Be yourself," which self do they mean? Certainly not the self that wants to win every game and use up every resource and stand alone at the end of time on a mountain of pretty garbage. So which self is it? For guidance, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Have you ever been loved? I bet you have been loved so much and so deeply that you have become blasé about the enormity of the grace it confers. So let me remind you: To be loved is a privilege and prize equivalent to being born. If you're smart, you pause regularly to bask in the astonishing knowledge that there are many people out there who care for you and want you to thrive and hold you in their thoughts with fondness.

Animals, too: You have been the recipient of their boundless affection. The spirits of allies who've left this world continue to send their tender regards, as well. Do you "believe" in angels and other divine beings? Whether or not you do, I can assure you that there are hordes of them beaming their uncanny consecrations your way. You are awash in torrents of love.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

In the coming days, you could do a lot to develop a better relationship with darkness. And no, I don't mean that you should do bad things and seek out negativity and be fascinated with evil. When I use that word "darkness," I'm referring to confusing mysteries and your own unconscious patterns and the secrets you hide from yourself. I mean the difficult memories and the parts of the world that seem inhospitable to you and the sweet dreams that have lost their way. See what you can do to understand this stuff better, Virgo. Open yourself to the redemptive teachings it has for you.

Take inventory of the extent that "No" dominates your life. Notice how often you say or think: 1. "That's not right." 2. "I don't like that." 3. "I don't agree with that." 4. "They don't like me." 5. "I'm not very good." 6. "That should be different from what it is." For help in retraining yourself to say "Yes!" at least 51% of the time, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Imagine you're with a team of explorers in Antarctica. You're climbing the 2,000-foot granite spire called Rakekniven that thrusts up out of the ice in Queen Maud Land. The temperature is 10 degrees below zero. There's not a plant or animal in sight. The blinding white emptiness of the wasteland beneath you fills you with desolate reverence, alienated awe, and soaring gratitude. You are far from everything that normally gives you comfort.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

Sister Jessica, a character in Frank Herbert's Dune books, says, "The greatest and most important problems of life cannot be solved. They can only be outgrown." I encourage you to use that theory as your operative hypothesis for the foreseeable future. Here are some specific clues about how to proceed: Don't obsess on your crazy-making dilemma. Instead, concentrate on skillfully doing the pleasurable activities that you do best. Be resolutely faithful to your higher mission and feed your lust for life. Slowly but surely, I think you'll find that the frustrating impediment will be drained of at least some of its power to lock up your energy.

How's your fight for freedom going? Are you making progress in liberating yourself from your unconscious obsessions, bad habits, and conditioned responses? For assistance and inspiration, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Breathe more like a wild boar and less like a parakeet. Act more like an unfathomable game with no time limit and less like a puzzle with just a few last pieces missing. Shimmer more like the aurora borealis in the early morning sky and less like a furnace heating a mansion. See more like a panther sees and less like your first teacher. Write more fat messages in the mist on the glass, and speak less about the skinny facts you know by heart. Eat more magic cookies and less brain candy.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

A few years ago, the Hong Kong company Life Enhance sold briefs and boxer shorts that were supposedly designed by a master practitioner of feng shui. On the front of every garment was an image of a dragon, which the Chinese have traditionally regarded as a lucky symbol. To have this powerful charm in contact with your intimate places increased your vital force -- or so the sales rap said. By my estimates, Scorpio, you're not going to need a boost like that in the coming weeks. Without any outside aids whatsoever, your lower furnace will be generating intense beams of magical heat. What are you going to do with all that potent mojo? Please don't use it on trivial matters.

Assume that your drive to experience pleasure isn't a barrier to your spiritual growth, but is in fact essential to it. Proceed on the hypothesis that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you every day. For inspiration in practicing this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Try this meditation: Imagine that you are the wood and the fire that consumes the wood.

First, focus your awareness on the part of you that is the wood. You may tremble or gasp, feeling the jolt of your solidity disintegrating, your form changing. As you shift your attention to the part of you that is the fire, you may exult in the wild joy of power and liberation.

It may be tempting to favor the fire over the wood, to love the burning more than the being burned. But if you'd like to understand pronoia in its fullness, you've got to appreciate them equally. Can you imagine yourself being the fire and wood simultaneously? Is it possible for you to experience the deep pleasure of their collaboration?
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

There are times in your life when you do a lot of exploring in the outer world, and other times when your pioneering probes are directed primarily inward. In my astrological opinion, you're currently more suited for the latter kind of research. If you agree with me, here's one tack you might want to take: Take an inventory of all your inner voices, noticing both the content of what they say and the tone with which they say it. Some of them may be chatty and others shy; some blaring and others seductive; some nagging and needy and others calm and insightful. Welcome all the voices in your head into the spotlight of your alert attention. Ask them to step forward and reveal their agendas.

"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." So begins Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield. I'd like to inspire you to write a story of your own that begins like that. For help, tune into your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
One of life's bounties is its changeableness, which ensures that boredom will never last very long. You may underestimate the intensity of your longing for continual transformation, but the universe doesn't. That's why it provides you with the boundless entertainment of your ever-shifting story. That's why it is always revising the challenges it sends your way, providing your curious soul with a rich variety of unpredictable teachings.

Neuroscientists have turned up evidence that suggests you love this aspect of the universe's behavior. They say that you are literally addicted to learning. At the moment when you grasp a lesson you've been grappling with, your brain experiences a rush of a natural opium-like chemical, boosting your pleasure levels. You crave this experience. You thrive on it.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

The Oxford English Dictionary, an authority on the state of the English language, adds an average of two new words every day. In the coming weeks, Capricorn, I'd like to see you expand your capacity for self-expression with equal vigor. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you're due for an upgrade in your vocabulary, your clarity, and your communication skills. Here's one of the OED's fresh terms, which would be a good addition to your repertoire: "bouncebackability," the ability to recover from a setback or to rebound from a loss of momentum.

I invite you to keep a running list of all the ways life delights you and helps you and energizes you. Describe everyday miracles you take for granted . . . the uncanny powers you possess . . . the small joys that occur so routinely you forget how much they mean to you . . . the steady flow of benefits bestowed on you by people you know and don't know. What works for you? What makes you feel at home in the world? For inspiration in this noble effort, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
The phrase "new roses" can serve as an antidote to neurosis -- as a kind of magical spell. You might invoke it when you're in danger of getting undermined by either your own neurosis or someone else's.

If you notice, for instance, that your subconscious mind is spiraling down into a sour fantasy stirred up by one of your habitual fears, you could mutter a cheerful round of "new roses, new roses, new roses."

If your allies slip into the same compulsive behavior that they tend to get stuck in whenever stress overflows, you could chant "new roses, new roses, new roses" in a tuneful, affectionate tone.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

We turn to Dr. Seuss for help in formulating your horoscope this week. He told a story of dining in a restaurant with his uncle, who was served a popover, which is a puffy muffin that's hollow on the inside. "To eat these things," said his uncle, "you must exercise great care. You may swallow down what's solid, but you must spit out the air!" Drawing a lesson from these wise words, Dr. Seuss concluded, "As you partake of the world's bill of fare, that's darned good advice to follow. Do a lot of spitting out the hot air. And be careful what you swallow." I expect your coming week will be successful, Aquarius, if you apply these principles.

All of creation loves you very much. Even now, people you know and people you don't know are collaborating to make sure you have all you need to make your next smart move. But are you willing to start loving life back with an equal intensity? The adoration it offers you has not exactly been unrequited, but there is room for you to be more demonstrative. For help in cultivating this approach, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Thousands of things go right for you every day, beginning the moment you wake up. Through some magic you don't fully understand, you're still breathing and your heart is beating, even though you've been unconscious for many hours. The air is a mix of gases that's just right for your body's needs, as it was before you fell asleep.

You can see! Light of many colors floods into your eyes, registered by nerves that took God or evolution or some process millions of years to perfect. The interesting gift of these vivid hues is made possible by an unimaginably immense globe of fire, the sun, which continually detonates nuclear reactions in order to convert its own body into light and heat and energy for your personal use.
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.

You should be like a rooster, Pisces: dispensing wake-up calls on a regular basis. You should be nudging people to shed their torpor and shake themselves out of their stupor. What's your personal version of "Cockadoodle-doo!"? It shouldn't be something generic like "Open your eyes!" or "Stop making excuses!" Come up with attention-grabbing exclamations or signature phrases that no intelligent person can possibly ignore or feel defensive about. For example: "Let's leap into the vortex and scramble our trances!"?

What is the obvious secret you can't quite see? How could you turn your challenges into daily gifts for yourself? For clues to mysteries like these, tune in to your EXPANDED AUDIO HOROSCOPE.

*

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT
Dear Beauty and Truth Lab: I was wondering if you had any information about Beyonders, people who were born under no star and who are therefore not ruled by the stars. - Wannabe Beyonder

Dear Wannabe: It's impossible to be born under no star. However, we all go through periods when we're relatively free from the authority of the stars we were born under and therefore immune from cosmic compulsion. During these times, we're less susceptible to the whims of fate and the demands of the past and the inertia of karma. Our willpower has more breathing room, and we're more likely to fulfill Einstein's dictum, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
*
The preceding oracle comes from my book, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia:How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings.